Posted on 03/17/2015 10:38:33 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
On the evening of June 5, 2012, after he had been declared the winner of a historic recall election, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker hugged his friend Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and took a call from presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Amid sobbing supporters, Walker’s wife, Tonette, pulled him aside and suggested he begin his victory speech by saying, “This is what democracy looks like!”
That phrase had been the rallying cry of Walker’s political opponents for months, as they marched around the state capitol in Madison and stalked the governor at his home. Following Walker’s announcement of his bold plan to eliminate many collective-bargaining provisions for most state and local government employees, protesters began occupying the capitol building, chanting loudly, and occasionally spitting on Republican legislators. The nation watched as Walker stared down organized labor, while unions attempted, unsuccessfully, to remove him from office.
On election night, Walker smiled as he considered turning the taunt around on the unions. “After hearing tens of thousands of people chanting that very phrase outside my window for months, it would have been enormously satisfying to deliver it,” he says in his new book, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and a Nation’s Challenge. But Walker decided not to twist the knife: “I wanted to use my speech as a chance to end the acrimony, and unite our state once again.”
(As Walker deliberated what to say, Rebecca Kleefisch, his irrepressible lieutenant governor, who had just survived a recall attempt herself, took the stage and immediately yelled, “This is what democracy looks like!”)
While he was waiting to speak, Walker says, he remembered a devotional reading on the “power of humility, the burden of pride.” But if, on election night, he had qualms about remaining humble, they seem to have subsided since then.
In Unintimidated (due out November 19 and co-written with Marc Thiessen), Walker strives for the delicate balance a rising politician must seek: He has to show readers he is genuine and down-to-earth, and at the same time explain that is was his preternatural personal strength that allowed him to do such extraordinary things.
Much of his fortitude he outsources to God, explaining that the collective-bargaining reform bill and the ensuing union attacks were part of the Lord’s plan. But unfortunately, God is not a Wisconsin voter (or at least we don’t know he is, as the state cannot yet compel its citizens to show a photo ID at the polling place), and Walker faced a steep hill in explaining his proposal to the electorate. Soon after the controversy began, his approval rating dipped to 37 percent. At one point, Time magazine declared him “Dead Man Walker.”
And this is why Walker deserves to have a sizable burden of pride. He pulled off a remarkable feat in a state that was both the first in the nation to allow public-sector collective bargaining and the birthplace of AFSCME. Unintimidated succeeds at summarizing the key challenges Walker faced, and he doesn’t hold back in criticizing his opponents. Rather than using tempered politician-talk, he rips the public-sector-union system as “corrupt,” characterizes the compulsory-dues framework as a “protection racket,” and bemoans the “lavish benefits” the unions have “extorted” from taxpayers over the years.
Walker’s attempt to correct these problems is what sent Wisconsin into a Hobbesian state of nature in early 2011, when hundreds of thousands of protesters descended on the state capitol in Madison, with thousands of them setting up shop in the statehouse and planning to stay for the duration. (“The place smelled like a Port-a-John,” Walker complains.) Walker provides harrowing details about the threats to him and his family and tells how SWAT teams had to be called in to retain control of the capitol building. (“It was like a scene out of Call of Duty,” Walker says, perhaps outing himself as a video-game enthusiast.) At one point, 14 Democratic state senators fled the state in order to block a vote on Walker’s plan.
But while he doesn’t pull his punches with organized labor, Walker saves his most stinging criticism for presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
After Walker’s big win on June 5, Romney tried to use the victory to bolster his own candidacy. President Obama, Romney said, “says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers.” He then asked: “Did he not get the message of Wisconsin?”
Yet Walker says it was Romney who completely misread the message of Wisconsin; it was Walker’s reforms — requiring public employees to begin paying into their pension accounts and requiring them to pay 12.6 percent of their health-insurance premiums — that actually saved teachers’ jobs. (Plus, police and firefighters were exempt from Walker’s law.) When he took office in January of 2011, Walker faced a budget deficit of over $3 billion; had his proposal failed, massive layoffs would have been unavoidable.
Further, Walker derides Romney for his attempt to pit “takers” against “makers,” citing Ronald Reagan to bolster his point. (As is the case with most modern Republican memoirs, Unintimidated mentions Reagan more often than Ernie’s autobiography would mention Bert.) “Reagan did not dismiss 47 percent of the country as a bunch of moochers,” Walker says, indicating a need to appeal to people who want “nothing more than to get off government assistance and find work.”
Walker’s critiques of Romney provide him a trampoline to elucidate what he believes are the lessons America can learn from Wisconsin. He offers familiar bromides, such as that “too many people in politics today spend their time trying not to lose instead of trying to do the right thing.”
As it happens, Walker’s chapter offering prescriptions for America closely mirrors the stump speech he has been delivering lately (including in — ahem — Iowa), but there’s a good reason for that: It is an effective speech, and he has the gravitas to deliver it. When Walker urges conservatives to show up in the inner city more often and spread the free-market message there, he knows it works because he has done it: In being elected and twice reelected Milwaukee County executive, he routinely won the City of Milwaukee’s Hispanic wards and overperformed in other majority-minority areas, where he talked of entrepreneurship and school choice. Walker recommends that conservatives talk more of “fairness” in order to avoid being accused of being tied to “big business” and “the rich.”
Attempts to soften the edges of conservatism and the GOP are cyclical; Peter Baker, in his new book Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, discusses how President George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” attempted to save Republicans from what Karen Hughes called the “grinchy old Republican” days of government shutdowns.
Yet Walker’s remedies demonstrate that conservatism is inherently compassionate, without needing an insulting catchphrase as a sales pitch. Given the hard line a small group of GOP leaders in Congress has recently taken, Walker is hoping it is time for Republicans nationally to take notice of someone who has demonstrated the ability to build consensus while sticking to his principles. Unintimidated is Scott Walker’s first book as an author; it is likely as well to be his first chapter as a national political figure.
— Christian Schneider is a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and covered the Wisconsin protests for NRO.
I want to be clear here.
I am merely saying slow down. I am not saying Walker definitely is not a good choice.
I am concerned about the Priebus connection.
It’s a head’s up that will alert folks what to look out for.
You may be right, this is another stalking horse. Then again, Walker may prove to be far less affiliated with the Priebus GOPe head and shoulders of the party.
Now over the coming months we can evaluate given the time we have.
If Walker is solid, I will have done him no harm today. It just means folks won’t jump in behind him blindly early on, and refuse to listen from here on out.
Later, if it makes sense, support him. If it makes sense later on, I may do so myself. I’m going to have my questions answered first though.
You want to round that out with a whole thought or two?
I now personally think that he used the union-busting as a way to burnish his alleged conservative credentials.
Walker has a history of saying one thing, doing another for political expediency. Like his pandering to the Chamber of Amnesty members in the dairy, construction, and restaurant industries, from accepting their money and endorsements before elections, endorsing a state holiday for a La Raza hero, his inexplicable refusal to crack down on the Cheap Labor Express in Wisconsin, his refusal to fight for traditional marriage, his against it-before-he-was-for-it support of the ethanol mandate, and on and on...
Walker is tainted with the Jeb Bush syndrome, of pretending to be something that you really are not).
He’s also buds with Grover Norquist the moslem lover.
As opposed to people in Arkansas who actually voted for the Clintons for president in order to relieve them of the burden of having them in the state.
Yeah and they NEVER address the crap of those terrorist groups, C.A.I.R and the Muslim Brotherhood’s big agenda setter, Grover Norquist, endorsing and supporting this Walker kid do they? Norquist is pure muzzie scum.
True that. Norquist just recently introduced Walker to his inner circle of political allies. I wonder what they ‘really’ talked about? God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy? Don’t think so.
Jeez, that’s bad news. Norquist is also an amnesty pimp.
Paul Ryan is also an amnesty pimp and friend of Walker.
I’d like to believe his recent conversion to a rule of law position, but these things make me wonder if he’s genuine. George W. Bush fooled me enough to get me to vote twice for him before he revealed himself to be for amnesty.
The RNC wants an amnesty candidate.
The fact Walker did not IMMEDIATELY distance himself from the Islamic terrorist biggie, Grover Norquist, and Norquist’s endorsement/support statements for him, says a heck of a lot about this Walker kid. Norquist is pure muzzie trash and is up to his ears helping fund raise, lobbying and agenda setting for/with C.A.I.R. and the Muslim Brotherhood......and has been for YEARS. Their is no damn way Walker should be anywhere near the top of our list with an association like this. Then we hear last night his new main adviser is pro fag marriage, pro amnesty? And there are FReepers falling for this guy? Good Lord help us.
When I first started to learn about Norquist I called the NRA to question and verify if they knew about Norquist and his agenda setting, policy making and lobbying work for the muslim terrorist front group C.A.I.R. (C.A.I.R is FAR from all of Norquist’s muslim dealings also). The NRA’s phone agents exact quote back to me was: “Sir, the NRA does not care what it’s board members do on their own time” end direct quote. Nice huh? They knew/know.......And he is STILL there after all these years! They do not care even after many members have quit, (myself included after many years of support and membership), over the Norquist deal.
Well said.
Walker has been corrected by the base on immigration, abortion and ethanol already, and he hasn’t even declared as a candidate. He’s moved to the right twice by my count already and may do it a third time if he finally gets ethanol right.
We hear Walker hates unions. Great, but so does Chris Christie. So does Rahm Emanuel, for crying out loud, since the Chicago teacher’s union is trying to replace him as mayor. If that’s the litmus test for today’s conservatives, I guess we have farther to go than we thought we did.
Liz Mair will NOT be consulting Walker on policy or campaign operations outside of communication, and likely will not be doing the oppo work. And also note that she is ONLY a consultant.
This is pure Karl Rove. Nowhere does Walker address social issues like "black takers" <=> "white makers", affirmative action (excluding whites), abort <=> pro-life.
All the writer cares about is how Walker did in the Mexican wards, which is the e-GOP trying to have their cake and eat it too: Illegal aliens brought in to scab off American LMC moveup jobs and break unskilled and semi-skilled wages can be persuaded to vote GOP with "just the right message" (wrong!).
[Art.]Attempts to soften the edges of conservatism and the GOP are cyclical....President George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” attempted to save Republicans from what Karen Hughes called the “grinchy old Republican” days of government shutdowns.
Okay, this is a Rovian knife in the back: Remember, Rove was Dubya's political mentor, and this was the kind of crap Rove used to say, to warn people against associating with mouth-breathing, "grinchy" (= Gingrich) Southern social conservatives, the shunning of whom has been Karl Rove's and the neoconservatives' principal political preoccupation, which they put ahead of winning the White House.
(N.B.: Remember that Karen Hughes was Dubya's most intimate political aide. Something went wrong, Dubya would call up Karen, and she'd quit her job and move back to DC to help The Boss. This helps locate the source of these comments. This is Manor Bush talking.)
Remember, too, that everyone was okay with social conservatives until they actually won something (the congressional by-electoral "earthquake" of 1994) and suddenly threatened the cushy, perpetual sinecure jobs of GOP "expert" eggheads, who've been trying to drive out the "amateurs" ever since.
Yet Walker’s remedies demonstrate that conservatism is inherently compassionate....
This is enterprise capitalism, fine as that is, but there is, again, no social-conservative component here, such as talking about promoting honesty and ethics, so that, again, this is Business Roundtable Republicanism we are dealing with here, not movement conservatism.
Given the hard line a small group of GOP leaders in Congress has recently taken.....
Note the cheap shot at Richard Shelby, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz. More conservative-bashing.
......build consensus while sticking to his principles.
Ding, ding, ding! There it is, the Rove message. "Build consensus" (corner-shoot and crib stray percentage points here and there) while avoiding Reaganism like the Black Plague.
Conclusion: This message was brought to you by Karl Rove and the e-GOP.
I dislike them, myself.
".... Even after billions in tax cuts under Walker, per capita state spending in Wisconsin is the highest of any state in the Midwest, including Illinois. In per capita terms, its state budget is twice as big as that of Texas.... National Review Jan 2015
Jan 2015: Walker budget to bar drug users from food stamps, Medicaid "Madison — With federal approval in doubt, Gov. Scott Walker is moving ahead with his campaign pledge to ensure that drug users aren't getting public health care, food stamp or jobless benefits.
As Walker explores a 2016 presidential bid, the proposal being included in the governor's Feb. 3 budget bill will help him sell himself to GOP primary voters as a leader committed to overhauling the core programs of government.
For the first time Thursday, Walker committed to drug testing recipients of BadgerCare Plus health coverage and also pledged free treatment and job training for those testing positive for drugs.
But the governor offered no details on how the state would cover the costs of that or the testing or whether he expected it to cost the state money overall, as a similar program did in Florida, or save tax dollars. The budget, he said in a statement, would also drop to four years from five the limit on how long a recipient could be in the Wisconsin Works, or W-2, program, the replacement in this state for traditional welfare.
"We know employers in Wisconsin have jobs available, but they don't have enough qualified employees to fill those positions," Walker said. "With this budget, we are addressing some of the barriers keeping people from achieving true freedom and prosperity and the independence that comes with having a good job and doing it well."
The governor said the drug-testing proposal would apply only to able-bodied adults, not the elderly or children, and would include transitional jobs initiatives. Walker wants to test all FoodShare and BadgerCare applicants but limit the drug testing for unemployment benefits to certain applicants.
The idea expands on another requirement passed by Walker and Republicans in 2013 to make able-bodied FoodShare recipients receive job training.".....
March 2015: Wisconsin tech schools might see an increase in performance-based funding "....This is not the first time Walker proposed an increase in performance-based funding for the 16 campuses. In the 2013-15 biennial budget, he attempted to increase performance-based funding for technical schools to 100 percent over six years, but the Joint Finance Committee put a cap at 30 percent. Walker then vetoed the cap before signing the final budget.
Gabriel said his organization supports performance-based funding to an extent. The colleges are for the most part performing at high standards and should be rewarded, Gabriel said.
He is concerned, however, with the magnitude of Walker’s proposal.".....
March 2015: Advocates: Walker's budget could hurt programs for disabled"...."....Claire Yunker, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health Services, said in a statement that Walker’s proposal is aimed at preventing fraud and abuse in the existing system and creating a more coordinated care regimen.
But Daniel Idzikowski, executive director of Disability Rights — a group that advocates for people with disabilities — said his organization was not consulted about Walker’s plan that the Legislature will debate over the next three months.
It would drastically restructure Family Care, which administers personal care and long-term care services to elderly, disabled and injured Wisconsinites through Medicaid, he said."....
March 2015: Scott Walker bid to end integration program [busing] has schools seeking answers "..."....[Scott Walker] has proposed eliminating the long-standing racial integration program, a move that could redirect $60 million in school funding and have a cultural and financial impact on Milwaukee, nearby suburban school systems and districts like Racine, Madison and Wausau...."
Dec 2010: High-speed rail funds scatter to other states "Wisconsin will keep only a fraction of the $810 million it won in federal high-speed rail money, while the rest will help fund train lines in California, Florida, Illinois and other states, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced Thursday.
Governor-elect Scott Walker had vowed to kill the planned 110-mph Milwaukee-to-Madison passenger train route that was to be funded with Wisconsin's share of $8 billion in federal stimulus dollars. Ohio Governor-elect John Kasich had issued a similar promise for a planned 79-mph line connecting his state's three largest cities, funded by $400 million in stimulus cash.
Now, almost all of the $1.2 billion from the two projects will be divided among other states. California is the big winner, with up to $624 million, followed by Florida, up to $342.3 million; Washington, up to $161.5 million; and Illinois, up to $42.3 million. Smaller amounts will go to New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Missouri, Oregon, North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana.....
In a meeting with reporters in Waukesha, Walker called the decision a "victory" because he sees the rail line as a symbol of excessive government spending.
"That's the decision they've made and we're going to move forward," the Republican governor-elect said.
Even with the federal government paying all construction costs, Walker has said he didn't want state taxpayers to bear any of the operating costs. ......."
This tells me Walker is a one perhaps two issue RNC stooge.Remind me never to get into a foxhole with you, LOL!
Absolutely not. I’ve always felt we shouldn’t put our dinner in our gas tank, and I’m allergic to subsidizing for that purpose.
If Walker turns out to be a fire in the belly Conservative, I could vote for him. What you mention does cause me concern there.
At this age, you shouldn’t have to modify your stance on three plus things. You should already be fairly well ground on Conservative issue, if you have fire in the belly Conservatism.
I appreciate your response. He is worthy of consideration, but your exactly right about union objections being the criteria.
I want it known, so I’ll say it again, I am very proud of him standing up to the unions the way he did, and I was and still am very happy he won his recall. Regardless of his overall standing as a Conservative, I believe that was a plus for Conservatism overall.
That still doesn’t mean he’s the right man for the White House.
I can admire a number of things about a person, but still come down no for that office. People need to be very discerning this election.
It’s one of the most important in our nation’s lifetime.
While that is always said, we don’t always have the likes of Obama being replace, and the opportunity to get it right like this time.
Thanks for your comments. I sure agree with you.
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